Adaptec 3805 Vs. Highpoint 2740

enigmo · 25 Oct 2011 at 16:53

Got a bit of an issue with a home server. It's currently got:
Adaptec 3805 -> Supermicro CSE-M28E2 > Several Toshiba 1TB 2.5" SATA HDs

I've had nothing but problems with this setup, what with the controller card randomly deleting logical drives and demanding a rescan to pick them back up again. To be honest, I'm not sure where the issue is, but I strongly feel it's the controller card and am considering cutting losses and replacing it. I have a Highpoint RocketRAID 2740 already, just unused, and am keeping one card and selling the other. So my basic question is:
Is the Adaptec 3805 performance hugely better than the Highpoint? Can't find comparisons of the two online.
If so, is the performance gain high enough to justify keeping the possibly unstable card and troubleshooting further?
If not, is the 2740 good enough to warrant replacing the Adaptec card and knocking it on, assuming it doesn't display the same problems as the Adaptec?

enigmo · 26 Oct 2011 at 09:25

smargh said:
Are the Toshiba drives on the Adaptec certified list? Presumably they're the enterprise variety?

Actually, no. They are not enterprise, they are the bog standard 2.5" SATA Toshiba disks you can get for laptops and last I checked were not on the Adaptec approved list. The Enterprise grade drives and 2.5" SAS drives were just too expensive for a home server. So, probably begging for trouble from the start, but still the controller randomly dropping the logical drives is a pretty major issue and far more than a simple 'incompatibility' I reckon.

enigmo · 26 Oct 2011 at 10:32

Right, swapped out the Adaptec card for the Highpoint and its all the same story again. Must be the Supermicro caddy that's broken. Problem I've had all the way along, though, is finding anyone with experience of using these caddies with stock SATA drives...

enigmo · 26 Oct 2011 at 14:00

I could swap out the drives, or sell the lot and restart with a more sensible solution, which is looking increasingly tempting

I was looking at the Startech miniSAS to 2x2.5" bays earlier. They seem less of an enterprise solution and so maybe more compatible with home grade drives. Or just drop the whole idea and stick with 3.5" WD RE4s.
As for RAIDing the drives, I was trying to avoid it if possible. The whole reason for getting the setup in the first place was purely for storage density; cramming the most GB into the smallest space, and at the time 8x1TB 2.5" drives in 2x5.25" bays was it, I just needed the SAS backplane and HBA to do it. The drives are currently backed up to a NAS box anyway, so RAIDing of any sort seemed and unnecessary use of expensive space.
Have you any links to articles about consumer grade drives dropping out of arrays? Enterprise grade drives aren't immune to errors, so wouldn't they drop out of arrays too, just less often?

enigmo · 26 Oct 2011 at 14:26

dewi said:
The problem with using consumer drives in RAID arrays is that they're likely to drop out of the array when there's a disk error.

The drives I have are not RAIDed, they're in JBOD.

enigmo · 26 Oct 2011 at 15:13

dewi said:
The link I posted in my earlier message explains why consumer drives drop out of RAID arrays: http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers...-edition-and-raid-(enterprise)-edition-drives

The reason enterprise drives work better in RAID arrays is not because they're more reliable, it's because they have different firmware. Enterprise drives implement TLER, which means that if there's an error, they just report it to the RAID controller so that the RAID controller can sort it out. Consumer drives try and fix the error, which can take several minutes, during which time the RAID controller assumes the drive is dead and drops it out of the array.

So, if I were to edit the CCTL of these Toshiba drives (the equivalent of WDs TLER), then the error and recovery problems might go away, although obviously not a good solution?
Instead of reducing/killing the TLER of the drives then, is there usually any way at all of increasing the wait time of the controller?

enigmo · 26 Oct 2011 at 15:35

dewi said:
I've never used a JBOD, but I imagine JBOD looks a lot like a RAID 0 array to a RAID controller, with all its attendant drawbacks.

Have you considered using Windows Home Server v1, if you can still get hold of it? Drive Extender would give you a single logical volume without needing to use a RAID controller at all. Unfortunately, Microsoft removed the Drive Extender functionality in Windows Home Server 2011 (they now recommend using a RAID array instead!).

If you're going to build any kind of array with as many as 8 drives, I think you should be looking at enterprise drives (which probably means going down the 3.5" WD RE4 or Seagate Barracuda ES route if you want to keep things reasonably affordable). RAID 5 would give you protection from a single drive failure without wasting too much storage space, and you've already got a good RAID controller.

I'm currently running Server 2008 r2 64bit.
The whole idea was to spend a reasonable amount on a controller card and drive chassis, and then increase the number of drives as and when needed. I'm thinking you might be right; just had a look a decently sized 2.5" SAS drives and I'd have to sell a kidney. Might get rid of the stock 2.5s and chassis and just get a few 3.5" RE4s.

enigmo · 26 Oct 2011 at 15:42

dewi said:
Instead of reducing/killing the TLER of the drives then, is there usually any way at all of increasing the wait time of the controller?

I don't know.

Right... I'll have a look about and see if I can change the wait time for either RAID controller to something more like 60secs, and if I can't, I'll radically re-think my storage setup.
As someone who knows what they're talking about then

given that four consumer 2.5" Toshiba 1TB drives, an Adaptec 3805, and this Supermicro M28E2 are incompatible as a bunch, what would you get rid of/replace for a decent home storage solution? At this stage, I'm quite prepared to repurpose the 1TB drives into my laptop and PS3, and sell the remaining disks and caddy and rebuild using another caddy and 3.5" RE4s. Can you think of anything better?

enigmo · 28 Oct 2011 at 11:32

dewi said:
My office server is built into a Fractal Design R3 case, which has 8 x 3.5" HDD trays. The HDDs aren't hot-swappable, though. There may well be another case out there that does offer 8 hot-swappable bays.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-008-FD

Just saw one of those cases at work a few mins ago as it happens! Very nice. Considering one of their other models to replace my desktop now.

enigmo · 28 Oct 2011 at 11:46

Enigmo.
First question is why are you using a SAS/SATA controller of that calibre but not using any of its advantages.

Basically for GB per bay storage. I have a CM Stacker 810 and having filled the rest of the case with seperate HDs for seperate things (optical drive, mirrored 300GB for boot, mirrored 500GB for the wifes stuff, 4x500GB RE3 for media etc), I found myself with two bays free and need for more storage, so the Supermicro caddy that squeezes 8x2.5" HDs into two 5.25" bays seemed perfect (potentially 8GB in two bays!), but I needed a SAS controller card to run it, so found the 3805 on eBay for a truely bargain price, I think it was like £85. Hence, wildly overspecced HBA, decent caddy, but still failing setup

I would also not bother with enterprise drives unless you are really serious about the data you have stored and need zero downtime if a drive fails. There are many people running WD Blacks (3.5") drives in arrays reporting no issues.

Now that's interesting. I was just looking at 1TB RE4s, but if Blacks will do then that might be the way to go. Would the timeout issue not still be present with them, though, being desktop-class drives?
Could I (in theory) connect four WD Blacks directly to the Adaptec card with no SAS expander or anything in between and use them in a RAID5 array?

if your controller fails you can take the drives and put them in any other Windows 2008r2 Server / Win 7 / Win XP / WHS 2011 machine and access the array again (only Win Server / WHS if you do software raid 5 I believe). The point being you are not card bound to be able to access the array.
RB

This last is also important to me, having been the victim of nVidia RAID death multiple times! My media 4x500GB RAID5 array is software based precisely for easy recovery. Speed is less of an issue as I rarely/never stream more than one HD stream from the server.

enigmo · 28 Oct 2011 at 12:00

Wow... Now those are interesting prices for hard drives... Right. Well. Now I have a rough idea of what's wrong (Dewi: I think you were right, ta) and an idea of what to do about it, I just have to wait for either a lottery win or Thailand to dry out!

(No offence intended)

enigmo · 31 Oct 2011 at 11:42

Just to clarify; I was indeed originally referring to 8x 2.5" drives, but if moving to 3.5" format then I'd stick with 4x 2TB drives, and if I wanted more storage I'd create a seperate RAID5 array. Needless to say, all would have course be backed up to seperate NAS.
Regarding the consumer/enterprise drive compatibility, I am a bit worried about moving from one consumer drive that seems to be having major issues with an enterprise class controller, just to jump to another one. Given the issues presented by the card/drives/caddy, I am going to simplify the whole setup, abandoning it as a reasonable idea poorly executed

4x RE4 2TB drives in RAID5 is a good replacement and I am willing to spend the extra for the RE editions, I just now have to find them for not-silly money.

Just a couple of points, though:

Running the RE4s without a cached controller (as the OP was looking at doing software raid) is just asking for corruption as the low TLER will sometimes recover and expect the controller to resupply the data as it could not write it correctly in the small window available.

I have had 4x 500GB RE2s running in software RAID5 for a couple of years now with no issues.

We are coming from different directions in this and to be honest this is not the best forum to post these types of questions as the vast majority of people responding are from enterprise environments and apply best practices from those environments to their answers. Some of which are total overkill for home environments for most users.

I know

But my setup is frustrating in that it usually falls beyond most people's home server setups (retiring my FC backplane simplified things, but I'm a sucker for exotic solutions) but isn't quite enterprise. My problems with this setup were proving difficult for tech support at Adaptec and Supermicro to answer, so I thought I'd try the forums where people might similarly have weird hardware combos.

I'm not convinced that using consumer drives is the cause of the OP's problems.

Part of my reason for abandoning this whole shebang. Three hardware components and I can't pin down the problem with any confidence, so I'm going with what should reasonable work; an enterprise class controller with four enterprise class drives.
BTW, I did look into TLER modifying software for these Toshiba drives, and apparently it is possible, but since it would totally invalidate any warranty and also make the drives work in a fashion they weren't designed to, I feel I'd just be setting myself up for more grief later, so knocked that idea on the head too.

enigmo · 3 Nov 2011 at 13:45

Also note that if you hunt around then you may be able to pick up some new 2TB SAS drives for only a little bit more than the RE4s.

RB

As a home server user, would I see any differences between a 4xRE4 setup and, for example, a 4x Seagate Constellation ES setup?